Game of Thrones (Fanon)/Pop culture references
A list of all reference to pop culture that are found in Game of Thrones (both canonical and fanonical.) Season 1 "Lord Snow" *The Butcher's Boys, Lucius Dragen's accomplices, make their debut in this episode when they help Lucius chase down an escaped prisoner. The Butcher's Boys are based on the Bastard's Boys, who are lackeys of Ramsay Bolton in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels but were ultimately left out of the show. *The scene where Lucius rams the ice pick through Albar's head is based on a scene from Season 3 of the TV show Hannibal, when Hannibal Lecter (who Lucius is heavily based on) does something similar to Professor Sogliato. "Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things" *During the scene where Viserys and Doreah are bathing together, Viserys mentions the dragon Vermithrax. This is a reference to the 1981 film Dragonslayer, which features a dragon named Vermithrax Pejorative. *When Alise Dragen says "there's a beast that lives inside him, and it's screaming to get out" when talking about Lucius Dragen, this is a reference to the lyrics of the song "Like the Beat of a Heart" by American heavy metal band Dio. *Mira Dragen mentions to Maester Vahaelor that her brother Domeric Dragen had a nightmare about Lucius killing their parents and cooking them into a meat pie. This is an obvious nod to Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. "The Wolf and the Lion" *The words for House Grayburn are revealed to be "We are legion" in this episode. This can be a reference to a story found in the Gospel of Mark from the New Testament of the Bible, where Jesus Christ encounters a multitude of demons that collectively call themselves Legion. This phrase also serves as part of the slogan for the hacktivist group Anonymous, who takes it from the same source. "The Pointy End" *House Grayburn's ancestral sword, the Darksaber, takes its name from the 1995 bestselling novel Darksaber, a book set in the ''Star Wars'' expanded universe (also known as Star Wars Legends) that features a superweapon also called Darksaber. Season 2 Season 3 "Valar Dohaeris" *When Codin Bruckstone is going over the guest list for the wedding of Elyse Blackgard and Marlen Rosby, he mentions one of the guests being Lord Tommen Wayne, the head of House Wayne of Orphan Rock. House Wayne and Orphan Rock are clear references to DC Comics's superhero Batman, whose real name is Bruce Wayne (with Tommen Wayne himself being a reference to Bruce Wayne's father, Thomas Wayne) and was made an orphan at a young age after his parents were murdered by a mugger. Season 4 "The Lion and the Rose" *When Joffrey Baratheon asks the crowd what he should name his new Valyrian steel sword, two names that are suggested include "Stormbringer" and "Terminus". These are respective references to Michael Moorcock's Elric series ("Stormbringer" being the name of sword used by the main character in the series) and Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun quadriolgy (with "Terminus" being the name of the sword used by the main character of the quadrilogy.) "Breaker of Chains" *When the Meereenese champion, Oznak zo Pahl, is insulting Daenerys, he is actually saying the French Knight's insults from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Season 5 Season 6 "The Red Woman" *Khal Moro and his bloodriders debating what is best in life seems to be an homage to the classic exchange from the 1982 fantasy-adventure film Conan the Barbarian. That they keep coming up with alternative answers until they have a list of at least five things which are best in life may be a reference to the Monty Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition. Season 7 "Stormborn" *When she is talking to Daenerys, Melisandre makes reference to the Four Beasts, who, according to her, are the divine harbingers of the Great War. The Four Beasts are based on the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. "The Dragon and the Wolf" *In the episode's closing moments, when the army of the dead are crossing through the breach in the Wall, the spoken word narration that plays is taken directly from the song "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash (which itself is taken from the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible.) The rest of the song the plays over the credits. Season 8 Other *The dedication speech that Trevyr Blackgard recites at Trovar's Hill at the end of the Fourth Border Wars is based on the speech that Lord Hood gives at the Voi Memorial at the end of the video game Halo 3. *The concept of the Bordermen nobility being known as "high-blood" is a reference to the concept of being pure-blood (purely magical heritage, with no Muggles in their bloodline) from the Harry Potter book series. *The Shepherd of Fire is an entire reference to the song "Shepherd of Fire" by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold. *The song "Rainbow Rising" is an in-universe combination of two songs by British hard rock band Rainbow: "Stargazer" and "A Light in the Black". Category:Game of Thrones (Fanon) Category:List Category:Under construction